There are a lot of days when we film in bad weather - days so hot your
eyeballs feel like they're frying, days so cold your hands might fall off, and
rain pouring so hard you could almost drown on set. Each month we'll remember
one of those horrible weather days and celebrate the survivors who braved the
elements in order to film. Why would we want to remember those days?
Because going through hell on set has a way of bringing everyone closer
together when they can say they survived mother nature AND filming on a Yibble
set.
Worst Weather
Weddings
In the real world, weddings are famous for having bad things happen to
ruin what is supposed to be a perfect day. In the low/no budget film world it’s most often the weather
that can spoil that perfect shot of a character’s wedding. There have been quite a few wedding
scenes in SFF productions over the years, although most of the scenes were
either pre or post wedding, rather than during the ceremony or reception. The ones that did show the whole
wedding, more or less since they were mostly montages, had more problems than
most of the pre or post scenes.
We’re going to take a look at the top four in order from best to worst
or, more accurately, from “annoying but
okay” to “that’s just sad”.
First up:
The Wedding
Montage from Episode 16 of Pandora’s Box
I really loved filming the wedding of De Carlo and Cat. They’re still my favorite romantic
pairing in any SFF universe, and their wedding montage is very sweet. Filming it was fun, but a lot of work. The girls arrived early to do their
hair and make-up, and in some ways it had the feeling of getting ready for a
real wedding, because I never take that much time and care to get actors ready
for anything really.
Cat’s wedding dress was beautiful and very in character for her. It was made from red velvet over a
boned-bodice and had panels of hand-beaded and exquisitely embroidered
decorations. However, it was
tight, heavy, and way too long. We
put it over a small hoop and tried to tack it up, but it kept coming undone and
both Margaret and Chris kept tripping over it.
The location chosen was the Urbana Arboretum. I think I originally intended for the ceremony to be in the
beautiful flower garden, but it was raining that day.
We ended up filming the ceremony itself in the covered
gazebo by the herb garden. We
filmed what we could, then tried to wait out the rain.
Eventually it stopped long enough to shoot the reception in the flower
garden. I had bought three sizes
of cake to make it look tiered, but it was august and the icing had a bit of a
meltdown. There was dancing,
toasting, but most of all roasting – roasting and rain, because it was hot,
muggy, rainy, and AUGUST. 
But in the end we had a blast filming the fake wedding despite the soggy
circumstances. Margaret and Chris
got into a frosting fight, which was hilarious but hard to wipe off given the
weather and the apparent stickiness of the cake.
Next it’s:
The
Wedding Montage from Episode 13 of Eidolon
Clearly I like to do weddings as montages, they’re more fun that
way. The wedding of Mordecai and
Maria at the end of Eidolon ended up being the closing credits because there
were too many flippin’ montages in the final episode (and it’s me saying that so you know it was
totally full of montage craziness).
It was the same situation of getting ready, only with a more modern
style to the wedding and not nearly as much time allotted in the schedule to
get ready for it. 
Maria’s wedding dress was beautiful, provided by Morgan herself, but
with long sleeves, long skirt, and heavy beading, the dress was not exactly breathable…and it was AUGUST! Okay, it was technically September – Labor Day weekend to be specific, but the difference is temperature between the end of August and the beginning of September is pretty much non-existent in Central Illinois. Why do I film fake weddings at the hottest time of the year?!? Oh right, because I’m a sadist.
So yeah, it was hot - pretty flippin’ hot – and most people were in
heavy dresses or wearing black coats of one style or another (Brittany and Jen
were okay since they had no sleeves).
It wasn’t rainy this time, though, so that was good? I guess. We were filming in the late afternoon, so it wasn’t quite as
hot and there was a breeze.
However the worst part of the day was the fact that I forgot to change
tapes before we left the house and had to send someone back to grab a blank
tape (at least the batteries were charged up). So the actors sat around for a while, dressed for a wedding
and wilting in the heat. Some of
the actors got a breeze by playing on the swings, the rest of us just tried to
turn our hands into fans.
Ironically the actors don’t always remember the bad weather unless it
was REALLY bad and nothing else went wrong I guess. I discovered this just recently when I asked some of the
Eidolon actors what they remembered about the wedding shoot.
“I
remember the dancing scene with all of us doing the train,” said Brittany Ann
Whalen. “Also remember swinging
and smoking in the dress when I wasn't needed. Also remember you making stuff
up when you were officiating the wedding since you were actually ordained.”
“I remember we had to take quite a break while someone ran to
get something,” said Syndi Eller.
“I don't remember what it was, but I do remember being fairly warm
wearing the coat. I like my hair like that though, I may have to go back to it.
"I remember thinking that that would be the only time I'd ever get to wear that dress," said Morgan Thomas. "I remember people honking on the way to the scene because they thought I was actually getting married. I also remember that this was going on at a really bad time so I was (really) depressed. LOL!
I was also completely blind without my glasses so doing much of anything besides standing still I about fell over."
Third on the list
is:
The Wedding Epilogue from Destiny
The first production we ever filmed – Destiny - was also the first
production to feature a wedding.
It’s the last scene in the movie and is kind of a montage – but instead
of music, there’s a voice over epilogue and obviously the shots we filmed match
the monologue so it didn’t take too long to film the wedding part. The wedding scene was in the middle of
the longest day of filming up to that point – the first ALL DAY shoot (first of
soooooo many) where we filmed almost all the castle scenes at the totally cool
looking Wesley United Methodist Church.
Once again it was – say it with me – AUGUST! And although some of the places in the building were
air-conditioned, the places we were filming were not – including the
Chapel. And of course everyone was
in multi-layer period/fantasy garb.
Once again I’m a sadist. 
Annamarie probably had the best chances of survival because Melantha’s
wedding gown had very short sleeves and wasn’t too heavily layered. Everyone else was in period garb or
hideous green sweatshirts that were too long and had annoying sleeves. However, Annamarie did have one ouch
factor – I had forgotten hairpins and wanted to style her hair for the wedding
scene so I told her I was going to use safety pins. She didn’t believe me until she tried to take them out. 
It was hot. Really
hot. One of the top three hottest
days of filming. If we hadn’t been
filming in a church I would say it felt a lot like the heat in hell (not that
I’ve been there…yet). So everyone
was uncomfortable one way or another and although no one got heatstroke, it
wasn’t for lack of me trying apparently.
(saaaaadist) Chris did end
the day being hit with a sword and got a nosebleed though. Why does anyone still film with me?
And the last and
worst wedding film shoot is (drum roll please):
The post-wedding
scene in The King of Elflin’s Daughter
Yeah, it was awful on so many levels. Although we were filming it at Allerton in the Fu-Dog Garden
- where so many people pay to get married – it did not end up looking like the
fairy-tale wedding that should come at the end
of an actual fairy tale!
First of all, it was pouring rain – like buckets of rain! That meant we couldn’t film out in the
garden or even on the steps of the Buddha Pavilion, we had to film inside –
where it was dark and damp and really gloomy. The skies were gray and got darker as we filmed the
scene but thankfully it lightened up a little by the time we had to do the very
end that couldn’t be shot inside. 
But the real kicker is that the actor who was playing the groom couldn’t
make it that day, so it was just the bride dolled up in a poufy dress in a dark
stone pavilion with gloomy skies outside the window saying goodbye to her
dearest friends who turn out to be ghosts and are leaving forever – IN THE
RAIN! No, this is not the final
tragic scene of an angsty drama – it’s the ending of a light-hearted, kid-friendly
fairytale!
Worst. Wedding scene. EVER.
There’s too long a list of people to give kudos to here, and
most of them are in the Survivor’s Club already anyway. Let’s just end this post with a promise
from me that I will never film a wedding scene in August again. There, now it’s in print so I can’t go
back on it…right?
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